Montespertoli

Montespertoli is a small town at the entrance to the Val di Pesa, about twelve miles from Florence. In the autumn of 1920, its town hall and piazza became the focus of a clash over the visible symbols of a crushing socialist electoral victory. A handful of Fascists arrived to remove the red flag; by morning, hundreds of townspeople had assembled to defend their right to decide who governed them. The episode makes Montespertoli a sharply local measure of the imbalance between an organized campaign of Fascist intimidation and the communities it sought to overawe.

Setting and Political Balance

The town’s political landscape was markedly different from that of Florence. The Fascists numbered only four or five among roughly ten thousand inhabitants, and the socialist victory had been overwhelming. A crowd of children, roused by a band playing the workers’ anthem, had carried the large red flag to the first floor of the municipal building. Its heavy folds hung almost motionless beside the town hall’s twin clock towers; the narrative likens its weight, more than ten pounds, to cement and suggests that only a north wind could make it wave.

The flag’s stillness did not make it politically inconsequential. To the Fascists, its presence represented a socialist victory made public in the town’s central civic space. The decision to pull down such flags in Florentine hill towns where socialists had become too visible turned Montespertoli into one target in a wider campaign of nighttime raids. Here, however, the local balance of power made the intended demonstration precarious from the outset.

The Raid and Its Local Preparations

Amerigo Dumini came from Florence with several Fascists after Gennaro Abbatemaggio had spent a week reconnoitering and coordinating with local supporters. The group was poorly rooted in the town: the local Fascist organization was small, and the piazza was deserted when the visitors arrived. Lino Cigheri, the local Fascist, invited them to supper at his home, where they ate ficattola and local cured meats before going to the Caffè Razzolini.

Their attempt to turn the visit into a show of force did not draw a crowd. The villagers disappeared from the piazza, leaving the armed visitors without an audience. Later, Frullini banged on the bolted café door and threatened to force it open with grenades; when women in the house called for help, no one came to their aid. The Fascists kicked a passerby and fired into the air at a small group of boys, but the square remained empty. Their control of the piazza was therefore only a temporary, hollow possession: they had driven everyone away, yet had no visible public support to convert that absence into authority.

The Morning Confrontation

The next morning, the Fascists rose late after drinking. Hundreds of townspeople were already waiting in a semicircle before the town hall. They had gathered before dawn, carrying the tools with which they worked their fields: spades, scythes, hoes, and pitchforks. The objects made the confrontation at once civic and material. These were not simply spectators facing an armed political squad, but local people prepared to defend their right to choose who governed them.

Cigheri’s wife, concerned for her home and children, arrived with the Carabinieri. Marshal Cocchi and soldiers escorted the Fascists to the nearby barracks as the townspeople watched in silence from across the piazza. The narrative emphasizes the crowd’s stillness rather than a clash: the villagers were ready to fight, but expressed no words of rancor. The armed visitors, disheveled after the night, passed through a town whose inhabitants had assembled in numbers they could not match.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

Dumini and his men remained in the barracks for hours, hoping reinforcements would arrive from Florence. Instead, Captain Ronchi came in an armored car with sixty more Carabinieri, accompanied by a socialist deputy and the provincial councillor Dal Vit. Deputy Pilati helped cool tempers but did not raise the question of removing the flag. The account thus leaves the attempted raid distinct from any confirmed removal: the episode’s decisive outcome is the public confrontation and the failure of the small Fascist party to impose its purpose by presence alone.

Montespertoli’s significance lies in this contrast between the scale of the intended intimidation and the scale of the local response. The Fascists came to erase a symbol of socialist strength; the villagers answered by assembling around the town hall, armed with implements of everyday work. In this setting, the piazza is not merely a stage for competing political emblems. It is the place where the town’s inhabitants make visible their claim to political choice.